Scold's Bridle

amphetamines and sizeable quantities of heroin and syringes. She's chronically addicted, I'd say, presumably has been for years. And, I'll tell you this for free, her mother's allowance alone couldn't possibly have funded what she'd got stashed away, and nor could fancy flower arranging. I think Duncan and Violet's anonymous letter said it all, Joanna is a high-class prostitute turning tricks to fund a very expensive habit, begun, I would guess, when she married Steven Lascelles.'

'But she looks so...' Sarah sought for the right word, 'unsullied.'

'Not for much longer,' said Cooper cynically. 'She's about to discover what it's like to live in the real world where there's no Mathilda to keep the coffers topped up. It's when you get desperate that you start getting careless.' He patted Sarah's hand. 'Don't waste your sympathy on her. She's been a taker all her life and, rather belatedly, her mother has forced her to face up to it.'

Of all absurd things, Gerald has developed a conscience. 'No more, Matty, please,' he said, bursting into tears. 'We'll go to hell for what we've done.' The ingratitude of the man beggars belief. Does he think I get any pleasure from being pawed by a drooling half-wit? It's Father's doing, of course. He lost his temper yesterday and started calling Gerald names. Now Gerald says he's going back to the slut down the road who first seduced him, and this time he says he'll marry her. 'Grace will give Gerry a baby, Matty,' he blubbered, 'and Gerry wants a baby.' Why, oh why, was my grandfather so stupid? How much more sensible it would have been to weather the embarrassment of certifying Gerald than to pretend to the world he was normal.

I sought out Father in the library, drunk as usual, and told him bluntly that Gerald wasn't playing any more. 'You're such a fool,' I stormed at him. 'Grace won't be bought off a second time. Don't imagine she hasn't guessed by now that she'll get more by marrying Gerald than by taking your bribes.' Father cringed away from me as he always does. 'It's not my fault,' he whined, 'it's your grandfather's fault. He should have mentioned me by name in his will instead of referring to Gerald's nearest male relative.' I could have murdered him then. The same old story, never his fault, always someone else's. But in one way he's right. Why did my grandfather create a trust to prevent his idiot first-born disposing of his wealth without clarifying that my father must inherit afterwards? And why did it not occur to him that Gerald might repeat the terms of the will parrot-fashion to any scheming little bitch who cared to listen? Grace must have worked out by now that Gerald is worth marrying just to produce a son who will inherit everything. I suppose my grandfather had no idea that imbeciles were so interested in sex nor, indeed, that they were capable of fathering children.

I made Father wear the scold's bridle all evening and he's promised to hold his tongue in future. Gerald, of course, whimpered in the corner, afraid that I would make him wear it, too, but I promised that if we heard no more talk of going to live with Grace, I would be nice to him. Now he is pliable once more.

How strange it is that these two, without a brain between them, can see the scold's bridle for the humiliation it is, while Duncan, who has some pretensions to intelligence, is disgustingly excited by it. For Gerald and Father it is a necessary penance for the sins they wish to commit. For Duncan, it is a fetish that unlocks his potency. He is invariably aroused by wearing it. But what a gutless worm he is. He begs me on his knees to marry him while he allows Violet and her parents to continue with the marriage arrangements. He is not prepared to risk losing her miserable dowry, unless he is first assured of mine.

I could never marry a man who takes pleasure in his own humiliation, for then there would be no pleasure left to me. I can only love them when they cringe. Still, it is odd how many men find cruelty attractive. Like dogs, they lick the hand that whips them. Poor Violet. I have planted fantasies in Duncan's mind that she can never satisfy. Well, well, what a very amusing thought that is. I really couldn't bear to see them happy. But then I can't bear to see anybody happy...

*19*

Sarah topped up their wine glasses and viewed the empty bottle with a wry look. 'Thank God my poison is legal,' she murmured. 'I know damn well I need an external stimulant to make the miseries bearable. Did you take her heroin off her, Cooper? She'll be in a desperate state if you did.'

'No,' he admitted, 'but you can keep that information to yourselves.'

'You're a very kind man,' she told him.

'I'm a realist,' he corrected her. 'If Joanna had murdered her mother then I was in a stronger position keeping what I knew up my sleeve than showing my hand before I had to. She would have been very vulnerable to police questioning if we could have charged her with possession and murder both at the same time.'

'You're such a bad liar,' said Sarah fondly. 'You're not going to charge her at all. Will you even tell her you know?'

But Cooper sidestepped that question. 'We were talking about how Duncan murdered Mathilda,' he said. 'So where were we?'

'With Mathilda being immensely suspicious when he came through the back door uninvited and offered to top up her whisky,' said Sarah dryly.

'Oh, yes, well he wouldn't have gone that way. He'd have rung the front door bell. It was quite safe. Violet wasn't going to hear anything, not if she was snoring her head off in front of the television, and I'm sure he had a very convincing reason for knocking on Mathilda's door at seven o'clock on a Saturday evening. He did know a great deal about her life, after all, any bit of which he could tap into as an excuse. She would have to have been deeply paranoid to lock her door against a neighbour she saw almost every day.' Absentmindedly, he tapped more ash into his palm then turned it upside down to scatter it on the floor. 'Once he'd given her the whisky, and watched her drink it, he made his excuses and left. He's a cautious man and he didn't know how effective the sedative would be, plus he needed to be sure Violet really was dead to the world and hadn't heard the bell ringing. Presumably if he'd found her semi-conscious, he'd have abandoned the project as being too dangerous and, by the same token, he wanted Mathilda well and truly under before he put the scold's bridle over her head.

'From then on, it would all have been very straightforward. He checked on Violet, donned a pair of gloves, collected the appropriate weeds from the garden-he wouldn't have done that during daylight hours in case someone saw him and put two and two together when they heard about Mathilda's flower arrangement. Then he let himself in again, this time through Mathilda's back door, took the Stanley knife from the kitchen drawer, checked Mathilda was asleep, took the weeds, the knife and the scold's bridle upstairs where he left them on the dressing-table, filled the bath, then went back down to collect Mathilda. All he had to do was scoop her up in his arms, put her on the lift, take her upstairs and undress her.

'The time would have been approximately nine thirty, we think, which has made the pathologist very happy. He